Bloody Sunday

By Steven Jacob

It's election day in Haiti. The first free and clean elections in over thirty years. When the president's goons attack an election site and massacre voters and observers, Hilton Greene barely escapes with his life. But there was evidence, a videotape made, and Hilton Greene--veteran reporter--wants it.
In exchange he agrees to take the filmmakers child to America, a risk worth taking for a Pulitzer worthy piece of video, and, boy and video in hand, they begin a desperate 24 hour escape in an attempt to get themselves and the video out of Haiti, before the police catch them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven Jacob
• Release date: Aug 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463125762

Steven Jacob

Steven Jacob is a man who likes adventure . . . at least on paper. He spent ten years living in Southeast Asia, working as a lawyer and consultant. Spending much of his time immersed in books and booze, he gave himself an autodidact's education on the region. He also got to know the laws and cultures through study and experience. He is an expert on Indochina. He was educated in Utah and California, and is now sober for several months. (It interferes with his medications.) He likes to go crazy in Asia, where he's had a psychotic break in Vietnam--twice--and once in Cambodia. But his mental health is not the full Monty. He became a writer in elementary school shortly after discovering Isaac Asimov, though he has since moved past a reading diet of pure sci-fi and fantasy. Now he reads a diet of history, award winners, and thrillers. He believes that you have to read the fiction to write the fiction, so that's what he does.

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Chapter 1

Claude Rene-Pierce was a mulatto in post-Duvalier Haiti, one of the gens-des-couleurs, a privileged minority of mulattoes, octoroons, quadroons and griffes, though the conditions of corruption and terror to which he'd grown accustomed under the Duvaliers’s rule still applied. There was no color line for terror. For thirty years the Duvaliers ruled the country by political violence using a brutal force of men loyal only to the president-for-life. They were called the Tonton Macoutes, wore blue shirts and used their machetes and AK-47s to elicit a coercive loyalty from the people. Even after Baby Doc, the son of Francois Duvalier, and the second self-declared president-for-life, fled with his millions in aid money, corruptly gained, and his family, the Tonton Macoutes roamed the streets thinking that now was their day. But the people Dechouked—the Creole word for uprooted—the entrenched terror. And then the military, and not the Tonton Macoutes, took control. They formed a junta, and even appointed a handful of civilians to rule alongside the generals; a temporary ruling council appointed with General Henri Namphy at its head. Upon securing his position Namphy proclaimed there would be free and fair elections.

But Claude doubted the general’s intentions, as the soon to be president busied himself dismissing members of the junta council in a purge reminiscent of those instigated by his Duvalier predecessors.

The fear of violence hovered over the populace.

Namphy was a pudgy mulatto, his face high yellow and susceptible to sun burns. He liked to wear his uniform, a khaki shirt and pants with epaulets and a hat lined with gold braids. Buttons festooned his shirt front; a number of stars that may or may not have changed from day to day. He had aspirations of lifetime rule. The Duvaliers before him, and most of the presidents since Toussaint L’Ouverture, served as presidents-for-life. It was only a matter of time before Namphy betrayed his promises and declared his rule indefinitely.

Claude knew this through the papers. The press in Haiti took a major hit under the Duvaliers. Its mudraking curtailed by arrests and raids. Many of the papers folded in fear and the few that remained published official news, and essays—carefully balanced essays that drew lessons from history, rather than the politics of currency. Dessalines and Christophe, Napoleon and Leclerc. These were the names behind which the intellectuals of Haiti hid.

Well educated, Claude considered himself an intellectual and perfectly capable of deciphering the literary clues left like inky breadcrumbs in such essays. A luxury of inherited wealth, the essay writing, was the province of the gens-des-couleurs, some of whom inherited funds from white fathers while others came into control of bequeathed plantations, the bounty of generations of careful marriage and arbitrary rape.

Claude was worth a pretty penny himself, his accounts not so much grown fat from any intellectual activities—though the fact of his money positioned him to pursue them—but from an inherited fortune.

Claude’s father had been a landowner, and not one of the black landowners who controlled just enough land to feed themselves and then not even that much, but a mulatto owner. Somewhere back in time, a white father left half a plantation with the bastard son of a black woman. It eventually came to Claude's father and then to Claude, who promptly sold it for a small fortune which he invested overseas. It gave him the time and means to purchase an apartment, marry, and start a family. And then there were the ideas. His inheritance made it possible for Claude to assume the airs of an intellectual.

But he had a family. A mistake, perhaps, considering the ruthless dictatorships that seemed Haiti's destiny—to bring children into such a world of misery and fear, panic and suffering—a wife and one son, his skin lighter than Claude’s, his hair straighter, his penis a godsend.

On the day his son was born he held the tiny boy in his arms and called him Joseph, after the husband of Mary and the human father of Christ. It was a propitious time, his money allowed them access to a good hospital for the birthing. But even then, his wife kept bleeding, she bled so much that the doctors couldn't do anything and she grew weak, even on the edge of death.

When it became obvious that his wife would not survive Claude lifted the baby gently into her arms and handed his camera to a nurse. It was the only picture he had of the three of them together. His sole memory of Joseph and Mary together, Claude's arms around them.

An hour after Joseph cried his first lungful of air, Mary slipped into unconsciousness and died. Claude mourned his wife for a year, wearing black crepe on his sleeve and abstaining from both alcohol and women. A difficult year in the least, for he was forced to hire a wet nurse for Joseph and she tempted him sorely with her swollen breasts and her smell of womanhood. He masturbated often and furiously to fight the desire and to remain faithful to his wife. But the wet nurse was married, and black, which gave him some solace. He could not dishonor the memory of his wife, or the skin of his son, by cavorting with a black servant. So he resisted and on the first anniversary of his wife's death, his son’s birthday, he pulled the crepe from his arm and visited a whore in the red light district of Carrefour.

It wouldn't be the last time he unwound in the arms of a woman he didn't know. It became his practice, to pay for sex. It was easier and, as he still felt deeply the loss of his wife, it allowed him to pursue his drives without trying to replace her.

His accounts balanced despite his profligacy, they always did, money was no obstacle, and he took up writing. He was an intellectual, after all, and he saw no reason that he could not write something as insightful and erudite as Jean Price-Mars, with his history and his challenge to the early policies of Francois Duvalier. Claude chose to avoid criticism of the regime, however, and began to write historical plays. He could spend hours over the history books. Books he purchased to fulfill his voracious hunger for knowledge. He became obsessed with history, with cataloging events, with leaving a memory of himself and his people for the future. He dove deeper than the essayists. He had read his contemporaries and found himself regularly disappointed. They all hid in the criticism of the revolution, their insights superficial. To Claude's thinking, essays were not the place to examine the heroes of the revolution: Boukman Dutty, Oge, Toussaint L’ouverture, Henri Christophe, Dessalines.

His colleagues in the press did not understand how to bring these heroes to life. They spent far too much time criticizing the founding heroes’s efforts to consolidate power over the Haitian people than praising their efforts to free Haiti from the white men. Claude wanted more than that. He imagined a history filled with the exploits of his heroes, the founders of modern Haiti.

As Joseph grew and his features figured more and more to please Claude and to display a skin nearly white, he proved it time to enroll in school. They lived off the Ruelle Vaillant in a small cul de sac across from the Argentine Bellegarde Primary school and in the afternoons Claude would sit at his window and watch the children walk from the school in their white shirted uniforms. He felt he watched the next generation of Haiti, one without the Duvaliers, one in which torture and fear were eradicated. It was a brilliant dream, but just that, at least as long as it took for him to finish his histories, a project that would take several more years. But in his zeal for history grew an equal and powerful passion. He felt that the current events of his fatherland deserved the same narrative, and that future historians needed evidence to tell its tale. It was perhaps a selfish and vain idea, this obsession with himself and his future image, though it echoed the vanity of the current president-for-life. He needed something more effective than paper and pen, something advanced that would be preserved for decades, if not centuries.

He began to wander the high-end shops downtown, the boutiques in Turgeau, everywhere, he was on a mission. But he only found what he really wanted on the television, it's highly censored stories full of life and vividness. Claude knew he wanted that, a vision to remain for all time. He knew nothing of tapes, cameras, or any other technology, he did not know how fleeting it would be and that within a few years the VHS camera would be made obsolete by digital progress. Ignorant of this, though, he grew excited and found an electronics store in the heart of the city. He wandered in, pretending he knew more than he did. He previewed the still cameras, the pictures they took, testing zooms and shutter speed. It was a facade, and his real interest lay behind a glass counter, a Sears movie camera. It was big, much bigger than the still cameras. It had a handle on top and a microphone above the lens. It was perfect and Claude grabbed it up for himself before another customer could walk through the door and steal it away from him. He also purchased a three pack of VHS tapes and a stand for the camera, a tripod.

Claude rushed home with his new treasure. He was so excited that he had to stop himself from skipping along the road like a small child. And then he saw a Tonton Macoute, one of the Duvalier's goons. He wore denim pants and a dark blue shirt. A hat on his head and an AK-47 in his arms. That dampened Claude's excitement until it almost expired. It hurt to think that even if he managed to do something like report the atrocities of the regime, he would be at such risk that he and his son would have to flee Haiti forever.

It remained true even with General Henri Namphy in power. The man announced elections to take place on Sunday, November twenty-ninth. When Claude heard this his excitement was rekindled. The primary school Argentine Bellegarde stood across the street from Claude and his son Joseph and was to be a voting place for much of the surrounding neighborhoods. They would be able to film the elections covertly, hidden from any military or extra-military forces.

When the morning of the twenty-ninth dawned, it was cool--even Haiti with its tropical locale could cool down--and that morning Claude woke up with cold feet. He felt something rotten in his belly. It was a nervousness that reminded him of a cairin rum hangover, yet he had not drunk rum the night before. In the front room he heard Joseph playing with the oversized toy train, its pieces carved of cheap wood imported from the Dominican Republic. Claude had found the toy at the Marche de Fer in a vendor’s stall that sold toys for overseas tourists.

Joseph was talking to himself in French, muttering a fictional world that he created from his imagination. Claude was proud that his son spoke both Creole and French. He had taught his son French at home, and allowed him to speak Creole as necessary with his friends. He insisted on French, though, and thanks to the idle time he enjoyed as an intellectual, he could oversee his child's education.

Claude watched Joseph from the door, his seven-year old son finding entertainment in a few pieces of wood laid out on a tile floor.

Joseph had grown to look more like his mother, his skin lighter than Claude's, and his hair practically straight. It waved a little on the sides, for it was long, uncut for several months, but when it hung short, it was barely distinguishable from a white man’s, a mark that would serve him well in caste riddled Haiti. The color lines were fluid, here, while blacks controlled the presidency, they tended to give over much of the practical aspects of running the government to Mulatto politicians. That's how Duvalier first came to power, but once in power he made a strategic move, for though he spent much of his time clamping down on dissidents and rumored traitors among the mulatto elite he created the Tonton Macoutes to control the primarily black population of the country.

They carried automatic assault rifles, or machetes, whatever was available, and they often attacked arbitrarily. They were a plague on Haiti, one that remained under General Namphy, even though the Duvaliers were gone. There had been a brief period, weeks only, during which the people uprooted the Tonton Macoutes. It had been a blessed day. But the junta clamped down, the Tonton Macoutes regained control. It was a terror. Much like the terror in France during the revolution there. Claude had studied French history. He had learned about what atrocities were meted out against the upper classes by the Jacobins. It was a terror and so were the Tonton Macoutes.

Claude walked around Joseph and found his way into the kitchen. It was an advantage of inherited wealth that he was blessed with running water for cooking, cleaning and bathing. He grabbed a pair of charcoal sticks from the box on the edge of the kitchen. He shoved them into the stove, confident that the smoldering coals would light the wood. He filled a pot with water and set it on the cast iron to heat. It would take some minutes for the water to boil. He returned to the front room and the window overlooking the Ruelle Vaillant. The replanted trees along the lane spread their shade across the street. He'd set his Sears movie camera in the front room last night, making sure everything was in place. He would be the first Haitian to record a historic election. If for nothing else he would be remembered for this, putting history into a durable and conveniently mobile medium.

Already he could see people lining the street, waiting for the Argentine Bellegarde to open its doors and allow the men and women to walk into the polling station and cast their votes. He saw one or two white men, too. They must be foreigners here to monitor the election. Claude didn't know, and he wasn't about to wander in the streets. He was risking a lot with the Sears movie camera, but he didn't want to push his luck. He had a seven-year old son to worry about, after all.

He opened the curtains enough to allow the camera to see through the window. He pulled the lens cap off and prepared everything. Soon it would start and he was ready. He looked through the viewfinder and saw the row of people waiting to get into the polling station. It was perfect. He hit the record button and stood back. And that was it. His dream come to life.

Chapter 2

Hilton Greene was a Britisher by birth but an American by naturalization. He'd hopped the pond during the sixties as a child: his parents, himself, and an older brother all transplanted by a new job. Greene had grown up in a small town across the Hudson from New York. Not close enough to go everyday, but on the weekends Greene and his older brother would take the underground and wander all over. The thing that excited Greene the most: the library, with its storys of books, of reading rooms, the chairs and tables. He could spend hours in that building reading and reading and reading.

And then he discovered the Strand, and suddenly he could buy all the books he could read in the library. He started saving his allowance to buy books and soon had piles and piles of them around his room, under his bed, on the desk, everywhere. His parents finally broke down and bought him a set of shelves. It was only a matter of time before he needed another, and another.

By the time he entered high school it was obvious that he should pursue something in the language arts. English, history, journalism, creative writing. For a time, he was convinced he wanted to be a writer, only he found that he enjoyed writing articles and essays so much more than short stories. He decided to be a journalist. His grades weren't good enough for the Ivy Leagues, but he did manage to get into the University of Florida in Gainesville where he refreshed the French he'd learned in England, and added Spanish language classes. He also went through the journalism program and, to his credit, interned at the St. Petersburg Times where he acted as dogs-body for the metro editor. It was that experience that took him to Miami and a job covering the Caribbean.

Recently, the place to be was Haiti. Not only was there a growing contingent of Haitian refugees in southern Florida, boats intercepted by US and Haitian Coast Guards, capsized boats that never made it far enough to be intercepted, and the departure of Jean Claude Duvalier—Baby Doc—there were real questions about the next step. At first there was a military tribunal made up of five generals and a few civilians, but General Namphy gradually rid the tribunal of everyone else but himself. He was now the only one in charge, and though he promised a free and fair election, there remained doubts and unease.

Two other reporters joined Greene at the Argentine Bellegarde school. This was a major polling sight and large turnouts were anticipated. Already a lengthy queue formed outside the school. In addition to the unsettling feeling that captured Greene’s insides came a rush of adrenaline. He carried a pad of paper and several pens and pencils. He didn't want to rely on pens alone—pens could break—with something so important. This was the first free election in Haiti in nearly three decades. It was monumental. It was terrifying.

A glint of light caught his eye. He looked across the street at a second story window and caught sight of a camera lense. Someone was filming the vote. Greene suddenly wondered if he might be able to get hold of that footage. It would be a journalistic coup to return to Miami with actual film footage. At least it would be if he could get the film out of the country. The government censors were keen on controlling information, and though he felt certain he could smuggle it out, he didn’t think he could transmit it over the satellite communications set up for reporters at the Holiday Inn. He marked the location. In fact, he almost started across the street right then, but was stopped by the imposing sound of gunfire in the distance.

The sound, the rat-tat-tat of automatic rifle fire, sent a cold chill up and down Greene's body. It kept going and it kept getting closer. Soon there were shouts, yells. Screams. Greene no longer needed to imagine the violence. Was this some last gasp of Duvalierism about to make a strike against free elections? Could the Tonton Macoutes still walk through the streets with impunity? What about the military? Why weren't they at the polling station to protect the people from bandits and murderers?

Greene moved to stand beside the other journalists. One was from France, the other from England. They all spoke French, the language of the upper classes in Haiti, and varying degrees of the common lingua franca of Creole.

Doesn't sound fortuitous.

The reporter from England scoffed. If the people want it enough—

The first blue shirt turned the corner of the Ruelle Vaillant and Greene found a curse on his tongue. The Tonton Macoute carried a machete. Others followed and soon a squadron of blue shirts approached the school. Some of them carried machetes, some automatic rifles, some just came bare handed. And there was an army Jeep at the rear filled with army soldiers. Was this then the new Duvalierism? Was Namphy about to support the continuance of the Tonton Macoutes?

Greene glanced at the window across the street, hoping that the man who took such a risk, to videotape what may soon be a bloodletting, continued to record the scene. He needed to get the army Jeep in the footage, to show the Junta’s acquiescence and complicity in the acts of Duvalier’s private army. If they all survived the morning Greene would approach the man and attempt to buy the footage. It should take only a few Gourdes.

The first shot hit an old woman. She sank to her knees and then tumbled over, dead. Blood spread slowly beneath her sprawled body and Greene knew, at that moment, there would be no fair and free election today.

With the woman on the ground, cries began to rise from the remaining voters. More shots fired. More blood sprayed. More cries and screams. And then the Tonton Macoutes with machetes reached the queue. They began hacking and cutting at anyone they could reach. A shoulder and head separated. Arms detached, grisly bits of bone and muscle hanging from